How It Works

ACCOMPLISHED PERSONALITIES from a multitude of diverse disciplines share their thoughts on the roles of creativity and intelligence in their fields of work.

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JONITA GANDHI, SINGER INTELLIGENCE IS REASON 

Born in India and brought up in Canada, Jonita Gandhi is one of the brightest singing stars on the Indian horizon. Her big break came when she worked with iconic Bollywood music director AR Rahman, and the title track of Bollywood movie Chennai Express was the take-offof her Bollywood music career, from where there has been no looking back!

Creativity or intelligence?

“Intelligence relies perhaps more on technicality, reason and logic,” says Gandhi; “creativity, though, is expression, and it draws from your feel and your energy.” She believes that both qualities have their well-defined roles to play when it comes to singing. “I think you need to have both in order to be good at what you do. Creativity helps with being unique, standing out from the crowd and finding your own sound. However, you must be a technically sound singer, in order to be able to appeal to the audience,” she says. She also believes that you must have some inborn talent and capability to be successful - “you cannot really learn to have a nice voice, though you can learn to sing well. The key point is how you learn and how you strive to improve.” 

Is Bollywood music getting more intelligent, of late? “Music is an open playing field!” says Gandhi, “and too many rules and guidelines only spoil the process and stifle the creativity.” Creativity is the bigger driving force of music-making - as she explains, “music-making should be fuelled by emotion, and getting creative with sounds is part of the process of expressing that emotion.”